Work Text:
The night shift at Bellevue had its own cadence, something between an out-of-tune symphony and a video game where every button is being pressed at the same time. Michael Dean James — who signed charts as M.J. Watson because his full name sounded like a bad joke fate had decided to tell — had been submerged in the controlled chaos of the New York emergency room for ten hours and forty-three minutes.
His comfortable sneakers, bought with three weeks of internship salary, had long since lost their original color, victims of something he had chosen not to identify. A sticky liquid of dubious composition. Remnants of cold coffee. Perhaps a little dried blood. He stopped asking after the second month.
His blue scrub boasted a coffee stain on the chest that resembled the shape of Alaska — he had verified this on a mental map during a moment of boredom — and his eyes, which at the start of the shift had shone with the anxious energy of someone who still believed in organized days, now had the opacity of an aquarium fish that had watched its aquatic neighbor get carried away by the siphon. The fourth cup of coffee had been three hours ago. He couldn't even taste it anymore.
It had been a long shift, as it always is in the ER. But that night had been especially long, even by Bellevue's standards.
At 10:13 PM, a woman was admitted with a sea urchin stuck in her right index finger. Inside the finger. She swore it had been "a diving accident," but someone had written "bar bet" in the corner of the chart in handwriting MJ recognized as belonging to the head nurse, who no longer had patience for plausible explanations. When he checked the woman's blood alcohol level, it was over 0.12.
At 11:47 PM, a forty-two-year-old man showed up with an entire bedside lamp — socket, lightbulb, and all — lodged in his rectum.
"I slipped," he said, with the dignity of a dethroned king.
"Naked? On the fucking lamp?" MJ obviously didn't ask; he had learned, in his two years in the ER, that some questions don't deserve answers. He had to restrain one of the newly hired medical interns from laughing in the man's face. The lamp had to be removed surgically.
At 1:23 AM, a twelve-year-old kid was brought in by paramedics after trying to "fly" off the roof of a six-story building using homemade wings made of cardboard and duct tape. He broke both ankles and three ribs. "I saw it on YouTube," he repeated, between moans of pain, while MJ applied a splint. "The guy said it worked."
At 3:09 AM, a middle-aged man was found unconscious inside a hot tub filled with Mountain Dew. The chart simply read: "found unconscious in a hot tub filled with Mountain Dew." There was no further explanation because no one had been able to extract one from the patient since he woke up, limiting himself to muttering something about "gambling debts" and "the taste of desperation is lemon-lime."
Room 214 was an oasis of silence in a hospital that never slept. Its occupant — the Mountain Dew man, now intubated and deeply sedated — slept the deep sleep of induced medication, free from worldly concerns like bills, relationships, and the possibility that his boyfriend had left the house promising to buy milk and ended up chasing a cat-man through ventilation ducts.
It was in this scenario of deceptive calm that MJ decided to check his phone.
Soon there were eight unread messages. Three audio messages he refused to listen to because he knew exactly what they contained — the sound of something metallic falling, that annoyingly cheerful voice saying "whoops, it was nothing, I swear" in the background, and the unmistakable noise of fabric stretching, as if someone was being pulled upward by an invisible thread — and one missed call of forty-two seconds.
Forty-two seconds?
MJ felt his stomach clench. Forty-two seconds was enough time for a lot of things. It was enough time for a goodbye call, if you talked fast. It was enough time to say "I love you" three times and still have time left for a "watch out for the time bomb." It was enough time for Peter to call from the middle of a free fall and for MJ not to answer because he was changing the IV drip of a man who had swallowed a twenty-sided die.
He pressed the callback button with his thumb still covered in blue disposable gloves. In the hospital, you were never completely without gloves — it was as if they were a parasitic but well-intentioned extension of your own skin. He had learned to type with them, to handle his phone, even to eat granola bars (although that always left a strange taste of latex).
The line crackled six times before connecting.
"Where the hell are you, Peter?" MJ whispered, already irritated, his teeth clenched in a smile that fooled no one. The patient in room 214 continued to sleep peacefully in the corner, enjoying his coma with the dedication of someone who had trained his whole life for it. His vitals were stable. His breathing was rhythmic. He was, at that moment, the luckiest human being in Manhattan, because he didn't have to deal with Peter Parker.
"Home," Peter said, and MJ heard the wind.
Real wind. High-altitude wind. Wind from someone who was at least fifteen stories off the ground and considered this normal. There was also, in the background, the unmistakable sound of footsteps on corrugated metal — that hollow, metallic echo that New York rooftops make when someone runs across them — and a "bye, thanks for the belongings" said with the casualness of someone who had just been through a robbery and found the whole thing perfectly routine.
MJ closed his eyes.
Counted to three in Aramaic — a habit he had developed after watching a documentary on exorcisms during a bout of insomnia and never being able to shake. Had, trein, tlata. The words echoed in his mind like a flawed mantra.
Then he said, with the patience of a saint who was about to retire from sainthood:
"Want to try that again?"
There was a pause. The sound of fabric stretching — the characteristic thwip, that noise MJ could now identify anywhere, even in the midst of ER chaos. A gasp. The distant noise of a car horn, coming from very, very far below. And then, the voice of Peter Parker, aspiring journalist, professional amateur photographer at throwing himself off rooftops, and the number one reason the supply of surgical sutures in the apartment was always low:
"I'm... almost home?"
MJ sighed.
It was a sigh that carried the weight of every sleepless night since he had met Peter in the second semester, when the boy with the messy hair and eyes of a lost puppy had tripped over his own feet and spilled a tray of coffee on MJ's new shirt. The stain never came out completely — a brownish circle on the left chest, right over his heart — just like Peter's habit of showing up at his apartment window. Right at the window, because doors were apparently too conventional for Spider-Man.
"The fucking Spider-Man," MJ grumbled, hanging up with a movement more abrupt than necessary.
He put his phone in his pocket next to a pair of surgical scissors and a pack of peppermint candies he wasn't sure when he had bought. The candies were melted and stuck to the plastic. He ate one anyway. The taste was mint and death and a little more latex. He hoped that at least the microplastics he was ingesting would one day grant him some divine enlightenment.
The rest of the shift passed like a blur of bandages and blood pressures measured with the care of someone defusing bombs.
At 4:47 AM, a man was admitted with a parrot stuck in his hair. Stuck in his hair meant that the bird had grabbed his locks with its claws and refused to let go, and the man refused to let the paramedics cut his "precious quiff." MJ spent twenty minutes distracting the parrot with pieces of saltine cracker while a nurse removed the animal with a delicacy that bordered on choreography. The bird flew out through the emergency room corridor and perched on the monitor of a heart attack patient. No one laughed. MJ almost laughed. But he was too tired for that.
At 5:12 AM, a vacuum cleaner was brought in by reception. Just the vacuum cleaner. The attached note said: "Patient's belongings from room 189. Please do not ask." MJ didn't ask. He had seen a vacuum cleaner stuck on a penis once — not tonight, but on an equally terrible night — and decided that once was enough information for a lifetime.
At 5:38 AM, a man was escorted in by the police, swearing up and down that he had seen Spider-Man waltzing with a statue in front of Madison Square Garden. "It was the Statue of Liberty," he insisted, eyes wide and pupils the size of small planets. "She stepped down from her pedestal." The toxicology screen showed LSD levels that would make Timothy Leary cry uncle. "Lots of LSD," MJ noted on the chart, in his perfect handwriting. "Patient released to companion." At least Peter wasn't out there dancing with… the Statue of Liberty, which was a relief.
At 6:02 AM, a woman gave birth to a healthy baby in the middle of the hallway, between the water fountain and the coffee machine. MJ held the baby. The baby cried. MJ almost cried too, but held back because he didn't have time for emotional catharsis — he had three more patients waiting and a shift to finish.
At 6:45 AM, he finally sat down to fill out the last of the paperwork. His handwriting was practically illegible, a scrawl that only he and perhaps a very dedicated pharmacist could decipher. He signed with M. James in the corner of each form, the movement so automatic that his hand seemed to have a life of its own.
In the process, he forgot to eat lunch, dinner, and the very existence of rest as a philosophical concept. He just wanted to get home and sleep. Just a little.
When he finally traded the stained scrub for a leather jacket that had seen better (and cleaner) days, the sun was just beginning to paint the horizon in burnt orange and bruised purple — colors MJ knew well, because they were exactly the shades Peter's face took on after a particularly difficult night of "patrolling."
He said goodbye to his colleagues with tired nods. The head nurse gave him a pat on the back and a pack of chocolate cookies. "You look like a zombie," she said, with the affection of someone who had seen MJ worse. "Go home. Sleep. See you in 3 days! And tell your idiot boyfriend I said hi."
"He really is an idiot," MJ agreed, biting into a cookie.
Outside, the New York weather was cold and damp, the kind of morning that clung to the skin like a wet blanket. The sky was clear, but the ground still glistened from the previous night's rain, reflecting the lights of taxis and the neon signs of convenience stores. MJ took a deep breath — the air smelled of wet asphalt, street coffee, of possibility — and headed down to the subway.
The station was in its most authentic state: the smell of steam and rusted metal, the tiles stained by decades of use, a musician playing an out-of-tune saxophone on the mezzanine while a couple argued in Spanish near the turnstiles. MJ swiped his MetroCard — that dry beep he knew by heart — and descended another flight of stairs to the platform. The train car arrived with a metallic hiccup, the doors opened with the classic hiss, and he got on along with a handful of tired souls: a delivery man with a DoorDash backpack, a nurse still in scrubs, a guy in a suit already sleeping standing up.
MJ grabbed hold of the aluminum pole as the train jolted through the tunnel. The lights flickered in rhythm with the tracks. At every sudden brake, his body reminded him of the hours at the hospital — his back aching, his eyes burning as if he had been peeling onions all night, which, in a way, was true. Only the onions were patients, and the crying was internal.
His mind was already rehearsing the speech: about responsibility, about giving a heads-up, about how he was not a private emergency call center for a man who dressed in red and blue.
"Peter, I love you, but if you call me from the middle of a rooftop again, I will find a way to tie you to the bed — not the fun way — and throw the key into the East River."
"You have to tell me when you're going to do something stupid. I don't care that you do stupid things. I just want to know when the stupid thing is going to happen so I'm not in the middle of an anal suture when you almost die."
"I can't stop you from being a hero. But you could at least give me a heads-up before you almost die?"
He rehearsed variations during the three stations to his stop. Some angrier. Some sadder. One that ended with him crying in the middle of the speech, which he immediately discarded because no, thank you, he had already cried enough in the hospital bathroom that night.
Leaving the station, he climbed the three flights of stairs to the apartment because the elevator was broken — it had been broken for three months, and the super had been swearing the repair would "be done next week" since day one — and felt each step as a small victory against gravity and exhaustion.
He opened the door.
The door, not the window, because he was a functioning adult (debatable, but he insisted on this point).
And he opened his mouth to start the sermon — the final version, the one he had decided on the stairs, a mixture of "you're an idiot" and "I love you, you idiot" — when he saw.
Peter was sitting on the windowsill.
Not inside the window, not in a chair near the window, but on the sill, as if it were a perfectly reasonable piece of furniture. His legs dangled outside — because of course they did — swinging slightly in the cold morning air, and MJ felt a shiver that had nothing to do with the draft coming through the crack.
The Spider-Man suit was in tatters.
The mask hung around his neck like a defeated second head, the red fabric torn on the left shoulder revealing a bruise that was already flirting with every color of the rainbow of physical assault — deep purple at the edges, bruised blue in the center, a sickly yellow spreading like a macabre aurora borealis. There was blood. Not a lot, not enough for a hospital, but enough that MJ was already taking off his jacket before he fully processed what he was seeing. Still, there was more blood than there usually was.
The blood ran from a cut on his temple, a thin stream that went down his face and was lost in what remained of the suit's collar. There was more blood on his right forearm — an ugly cut, the kind that would probably need stitches, maybe even one or two layers of suturing. And there was a deep scratch on his chest, right over the spider emblem, as if someone had tried to rip the symbol off with a knife.
Peter's face, when he turned, was a study in contrasts.
The smile, that cursed smile that MJ hated loving, wide and unarmed and so genuinely happy it hurt, coexisted with a black eye that looked like it had been painted in watercolors of wine and eggplant, and a cut on his cheekbone that was still moist, fresh, probably from less than an hour ago. The muggers — or villains, or monsters, or whatever Peter had faced this time — really hadn't gone easy on him.
"Hey, darling," Peter said, as if he had just come back from a walk in the park and not from a night of hanging from beams and trading punches with people who probably wore bulletproof vests with the word "villain" printed in capital letters.
MJ closed the door behind him with a click too soft for what he felt.
The jacket fell to the floor with a heavy thud. His footsteps made noise on the wooden floor as he advanced toward Peter. Each step was a decision: not to shout, not to cry, not to ask what happened because he knew the answer would be "no big deal" or "just another day at the office" or some variation of minimization that would make MJ want to strangle his boyfriend with his own hands.
His body, trained by years of hospital emergency, was already moving toward the bathroom cabinet. He knew exactly where everything was — the gauze, the antiseptic, the needles, the surgical thread, the scissors, the bags of saline, the sterile gloves — because that cabinet was basically a mini emergency room set up for one person. One person who confused "I'm going to the market" with "I'm going to stop a bank robbery" and came back with more holes than Swiss cheese.
His hands, which had trembled slightly at the start of the shift and now had the steadiness of an experienced surgeon, organized the materials on the coffee table with the precision of someone who had done this dozens of times. Maybe hundreds. He had lost count after the third month of dating, when Peter had shown up at the window with a broken rib and an impending pneumothorax and MJ had had to improvise a chest tube with materials bought from the corner pharmacy.
The morning light came in through the gaps in the curtain — that cheap IKEA curtain they had never managed to hang properly, always crooked, always with one side shorter than the other — casting golden stripes on the scratched wooden floor. The apartment smelled of coffee brewed hours ago (the grounds still in the pot, because Peter never remembered to wash it), of forgotten kitchen gas (the stove was on low, with an empty pan on top — what had he been cooking at six in the morning?), and of Peter.
That indefinable smell that MJ had never been able to name, but would recognize anywhere. It wasn't perfume or deodorant. It wasn't soap or shampoo. It was him — a mixture of the suit's synthetic fabric, of sweat, of something sweet that could be leftover donut, of something metallic that could be dried blood. MJ had once tried to describe it to himself: it's the smell of safety, he had thought, and had never been able to not think that since.
"You're late," MJ said, finally, sitting on the sofa and patting the cushion beside him with a gesture that admitted no argument.
His voice came out more tired than irritated, which was perhaps worse, because Peter immediately understood what that meant. The smile faltered for a second — just a second — and his brown eyes, those eyes MJ knew so well, filled with something that looked like guilt and gratitude and exhaustion, all mixed together.
The hero climbed down from the sill.
MJ held his breath. Peter's movements were slower than normal, stiffer, as if every joint complained before bending. He leaned on the window frame with one arm, made a face when his injured shoulder protested, and let himself fall onto the sofa like a bag of poorly tied bones.
The synthetic leather creaked under his weight. For a moment they were both silent — just Peter's breathing, a little more labored than it should be, and the distant noise of traffic far below, and the tick-tick-tick of the kitchen clock that was three hours slow because no one ever remembered to set it.
"You're angry," Peter said, not as a question.
"I'm tired," MJ replied, dabbing a cotton ball soaked in antiseptic on the cut on his face with a tenderness that contradicted his words.
The cotton touched the skin and Peter made a sound — a soft "ssss," between his teeth — but didn't pull away. He never pulled away. It was one of the few things MJ could rely on: Peter Parker didn't run from bandages, even the ones that stung.
"I worked twelve hours, Peter. Twelve. Hours." MJ emphasized each word as if hammering nails. "I saw things I can't describe without violating at least three oaths of modern medicine. A man tried to explain to me that he let his three-year-old son swallow a lamp because 'the voice told him to.' I didn't ask which voice. I don't want to know which voice."
He paused, the cotton ball hovering in the air, and took a deep breath.
"And in the middle of all that, you —" Another pause. "You call me. From the middle of a fucking rooftop. Say you're home."
"Technically, I was heading home—"
"Peter."
The name came out as both a warning and a plea.
MJ applied the antiseptic harder than necessary, and Peter didn't complain — just made a face that wrinkled his entire face. Nose, forehead, mouth, even his ears seemed to contract, as if he were one of those stress balls people squeeze when they're anxious. In any other circumstance, it would have been ridiculous enough to make MJ laugh.
But not now.
"You know what I thought?" MJ continued, swapping the cotton ball for tweezers to assess the deeper cut on the forearm. The tweezers glinted in the morning light, and he tilted Peter's arm to see better. The cut was ugly — about four centimeters, jagged edges, probably made by something serrated. A kitchen knife? A piece of metal? He didn't ask. Not yet.
"I thought 'okay, maybe he's been kidnapped.'" He began cleaning the wound with saline, gentle jets that washed away the dried blood and revealed the raw flesh beneath. "I thought 'maybe a villain got him and is using the phone to make a taunting call.' I thought 'maybe he fell off a building and is unconscious in an alley and I'll find out tomorrow on the news.'"
His voice faltered slightly on the last sentence. He cleared his throat, disguising it.
"What a way to wake up tomorrow, huh?"
"MJ..."
"But no." He emphasized the words with a movement of the tweezers. "You were just being Spider-Man. The same Spider-Man who—"
MJ laughed, a short, humorless sound, as he began to prepare the needle and thread. His fingers worked with automatic precision — threading the needle, tying the knot, pulling to test the tension. He had done this hundreds of times, on bodies that weren't Peter's, on bodies that sometimes weren't even conscious enough to feel.
"Do you know how many patients I treated today who are also heroes?" The needle glinted. "People who thought they had time, that it would work out, that the bullets would miss. People who didn't make it home."
The silence that followed was heavy, full of unspoken things.
Peter watched MJ's hands working — long, dark, with bitten cuticles (a nervous habit he had never been able to shake) and a small tattoo on his wrist that said "breathe" in cursive. The tattoo was crooked, because MJ had gotten it in a dubious basement at sixteen, but Peter loved every imperfect line. He also loved the way MJ's fingers moved — firm, precise, so careful — as if each stitch were a promise.
Something tightened in his chest that had nothing to do with his probably cracked ribs.
"I don't want to decide anything in your life," MJ said, and his voice was lower now, more intimate, as if he were talking to himself as much as to Peter. "I don't want you to stop being a hero just because I worry about you. But you know that every time you go out there as if the responsibility for the entire city's well-being is yours, I die of worry."
He pulled the thread, closing the cut with a precise knot.
"So please, just let me know, okay? Get life insurance, I don't know. I just... just please, Peter. Don't die being a martyr. I don't want to lose you like that."
"Baby..." Peter tried, placing his hand on MJ's jaw. His fingers were cold — the night on the roof did that — but the touch was warm, full of intention. He tried to make MJ look at him, turn that tired, beautiful face toward his.
But MJ sniffled and pulled his face away from his boyfriend's hands.
"Don't 'baby' me. I'm serious."
Peter swallowed hard. There was something in MJ's voice, a tremor so faint it was almost imperceptible, a roughness that didn't come only from the fatigue that hit him like a punch to the gut. He had known MJ for years. He knew when he was just irritated (most of the time) and when he was genuinely hurt (rarely, and always because of Peter).
Always because of Peter.
"I'm so sorry," Peter said, and for the first time since MJ had entered, his voice didn't have the tone of a rehearsed excuse or a hasty justification. It was just... true.
He shifted on the sofa, trying to find a position that didn't hurt so much, and felt the weight of all the nights MJ had spent waiting. Waiting for a phone call. Waiting for a text. Waiting for him to come back through the window with another cut to sew.
"Not for doing what I do," Peter continued, more slowly. "But for not letting you know. For leaving you worried. For... making you think I might not come back."
MJ put in two more stitches before answering.
His hands didn't tremble. They never trembled when he was sewing — it was the only thing that kept him calm, the feeling of the needle piercing the skin, the thread sliding, the wound closing like a mouth that had finally learned to shut up. It was control. It was order. It was everything the rest of life wasn't.
When he spoke, his eyes didn't meet Peter's. They remained fixed on his own work, focused on tying the surgical thread with a knot that would hold even under tension — a surgical knot, the first he had learned in medical school, the one his professor had said "will save lives if you do it right."
"You're going to die one day, Peter Parker."
The sentence came out flat, clinical, like a diagnosis. Like something he read on charts every day. "Patient found without vital signs. Time of death: xx:xx."
"It could be tomorrow, it could be fifty years from now. But every time you go out that window dressed as a spider, I know the chances increase." He cut the thread with the scissors — snap — and finally looked up. "And I can't do anything about that. I can't stop you. I can't follow you. All I can do is be here waiting, with a needle and thread, to mend whatever's left."
Peter placed his hand again on MJ's jaw.
This time, MJ didn't pull away.
Peter's face was closer than he expected — his brown eyes shining with something that seemed too moist to be just fatigue, his lips parted as if he wanted to say something and didn't know how. The cut was stitched — four clean stitches, well-spaced, that would heal in a week if Peter didn't do anything stupid (unlikely). The black eye was starting to swell, and the skin around it was warm, inflamed.
Even so, even with all the dried blood and bruises and the stupidity of a man who threw himself off buildings for strangers, he was the most beautiful thing MJ had ever seen.
More beautiful than the sunrise over the East River, when the dark waters ignite in orange and pink as if someone had set fire to the horizon. More beautiful than the first page of an old comic book, the kind Peter's uncle kept in shoeboxes, with drawings so vibrant they seemed to move under the yellow lamplight. More beautiful, even, than that specific issue of Amazing Fantasy #15 that MJ had once seen in a comic book store and almost bought — not for its historical value, but for the expression on the drawn Peter's face, even masked, that same look of "I know this might kill me, but I'm going to do it anyway."
"You're terrible at this," MJ murmured, running his thumb over Peter's eyebrow with a lightness that contradicted everything he had just said. The touch was soft, almost a caress, and Peter closed his eyes for a second, tilting his head against MJ's hand. "At this whole taking care of yourself thing."
"That's why I have you," Peter replied, and his smile finally returned — smaller, more tired, but genuine.
He tilted his head, resting his forehead against MJ's. Their foreheads touched — MJ's warm skin against Peter's cool skin, the dried sweat and the antiseptic and the smell of coffee and blood. For a moment, the outside world ceased to exist. The cars, the sirens, the guy who was probably still trying to explain the lamp story to the psychiatry team. Everything fell silent, except for their breathing, mingled, warm, alive.
"You need to stop sitting on the windowsill," MJ said against Peter's lips. The sentence came out whispered, almost unintentional, as if he were talking to himself. "If I see you on that fucking sill again today, I'm going to sew you to this sofa."
"Oh, that's 𝓚𝓲𝓷𝓴𝔂."
"Go fuck yourself."
Peter laughed — a low, hoarse sound that vibrated against MJ's chest. The laugh soon turned into a groan when the vibration jostled his bruised ribs, but he didn't stop laughing, because he was Peter, and Peter laughed in situations that would make any normal person cry. It was one of his many flaws. It was also one of the things MJ loved most about him.
Everything was terribly, ridiculously, unbearably right.
MJ pulled Peter closer.
His hands found the back of Peter's neck, his fingers tangling in his messy hair — dirty with soot, stuck in places with dried blood, but soft by nature. He pulled carefully, with the precision of someone used to handling fragile bodies, and felt Peter relax against him, as if all the weight of the night could finally be deposited somewhere else.
It wasn't the desperate kiss of movies, nor the reconciliatory kiss of soap operas. It was something calmer, a kiss of shared exhaustion. MJ's lips were dry — he hadn't drunk water properly since the night before — and Peter's were chapped, with a metallic taste of blood that wasn't entirely from the cut. It didn't matter.
MJ pressed gently, feeling the shape of Peter's mouth against his. It was familiar and new at the same time — like coming home after a long trip and finding everything exactly in its place, but also different, because the morning light was coming in from an angle it never came from, because there was a new bruise on Peter's face, because the sofa creaked when they moved.
Peter sighed against MJ's mouth, a small sound, almost a moan, that seemed to say finally or thank you or me too. MJ deepened the kiss.
His hand on Peter's neck tightened slightly, pulling him closer, while his other hand rested on his boyfriend's chest, feeling the heartbeat through the torn fabric of the suit. Thump-thump, thump-thump. Strong. Alive. Stubbornly alive. He could feel Peter's accelerated pulse — not from nervousness, but from fatigue, from residual adrenaline, from all the things that ran through that impossible man's blood.
Peter's tongue touched his, a timid movement, asking permission. MJ responded with a firmer press, a slow slide, and felt Peter's body tremble slightly against his. It wasn't cold — the morning was mild, and the apartment was overheated because Peter always forgot to turn down the thermostat. It was Peter. It was the way he always trembled a little after a bad night, as if his body was only now remembering that it was tired.
MJ pulled back just enough to speak, their foreheads still touching, their breaths mingling.
"You smell like donut and disaster," he murmured, and there was a smile in his voice now, small and tired, but real.
"It's my new cologne," Peter replied, eyes still closed, lips curved. "It's called 'I Saved Queens and All I Got Was This Donut.'"
MJ laughed — a low sound, almost a sob — and kissed Peter again.
This time it was faster, more assertive. A firm press, a seal, a promise. Then another kiss, softer, on the corner of Peter's mouth. Then another, on his cheekbone, right next to the stitched cut. Then another, on his temple, where the blood had already dried into a dark crust.
"You idiot," MJ whispered against Peter's skin. "An idiot, the stupidest man I've ever met."
"Your idiot," Peter agreed, and his arms finally moved to wrap around MJ — carefully, with the awareness of someone who knew exactly where every bruise was — and pulled him into a hug.
They stayed like that for a long moment. Peter with his face buried in MJ's neck, breathing in the smell of antiseptic and coffee and home. MJ with his fingers making circles on Peter's back, feeling each scar through the torn fabric — some recent, some old, all mapped in his memory like stars in a private sky.
Later — after the shower, after the bandage was changed, after Peter finally ate something that wasn't microwave food (MJ made scrambled eggs, because it was the only thing he couldn't burn, and Peter ate three servings while recounting a confusing story about a guy dressed as a lizard and a truck full of frozen fish) — they lay down on the sofa.
The blanket Aunt May had knitted was thrown over the back, a patchwork quilt that had more holes than fabric and smelled of lavender and nostalgia. MJ pulled it over both of them, feeling the familiar weight of the worn knitting, and snuggled against Peter with the practice of someone who had done it a thousand times.
The television was on a documentary channel about insects — the narrator's deep voice describing the mating of beetles with the seriousness of someone narrating a Greek tragedy. Peter insisted it was "research," that he needed to understand the behavioral patterns of arthropods to "communicate better with insect-themed villains." MJ was too tired to argue.
"You know there are no insect-themed villains, right?" MJ murmured, eyes already closed.
"Ever heard of Scorpion?"
"...That's an arachnid."
"I'm an arachnid."
"Peter."
"What? It's true. I'm an arachnid."
MJ didn't answer. He just held Peter a little tighter, feeling the stitches under his fingers (firm, secure, healing), the pulse in the other's neck (alive, strong, stubbornly alive), the warmth of the tired body against his. He allowed himself to close his eyes — really close them, without the tension of someone waiting for the next alarm or the next patient or the next call from a rooftop.
The fatigue came like a tide, slow and irresistible, pulling him into a deep sleep. But just before he fell completely, he heard Peter's voice, low and hesitant:
"MJ?"
"Hm."
"I'll try to let you know. Really. I can't promise I'll always remember, because... you know how it is. But I'll try."
MJ opened one eye. The morning light was stronger now, bathing Peter's face in golden tones and revealing every detail — the deep circles under his eyes, the stitched cut, the bruise that was already starting to turn purple, and those brown eyes that looked at him with an unusual seriousness.
"You're terrible at making promises," MJ said, without malice.
"That's why I'm not promising. I'm... trying."
MJ was silent for a moment. Then, very slowly, he raised his hand and touched Peter's face — the jaw, the lower lip (chapped, but whole), the corner of his good eye. His thumb slid over the brown skin with a tenderness he rarely allowed himself to show during the day, when he was awake and armed against the world.
"Trying is good enough," he said finally. "For now."
Peter's smile — that smile — bloomed on his face, even tired, even sore, even with the black eye and the stitched cut. It was the smile of someone who had spent the entire night being hit by things that shouldn't exist and still managed to find humor in the world.
"I love you," Peter said, simply.
"I love you too," MJ replied, and it was true. He knew it. Had known it since the second semester, since the coffee tray, since the first time Peter had shown up at his window with a broken rib and an apology on his lips.
The kiss that came after was different from the others.
It was a kiss of resolved exhaustion — slow, lazy, unhurried. MJ's lips moved against Peter's with an intimacy that needed no explanation, a choreography rehearsed by years of practice and need. Peter's tongue touched his, and MJ allowed it, opening his mouth in a sigh that was lost between them. The taste was of coffee (the one MJ had drunk hours ago) and of blood (the cut on Peter's lip) and of something sweet (the donut Peter had eaten after the eggs). It was imperfect to a level that was almost ugly, but it was good.
Peter's hand slid up into MJ's hair, fingers tangling in the curly strands, pulling gently. MJ moaned — a low, hoarse sound — and felt Peter smile against his mouth, that idiot always smiling, even during kisses.
"Stop smiling," MJ murmured.
"Can't."
"Try."
"I'm trying."
MJ bit Peter's lower lip — gently, just a press of teeth — and Peter laughed, the vibration echoing between them.
When they finally parted, they were breathless and disheveled, lips swollen and eyes shining. The insect documentary was still playing in the background — now it was about ants, and the narrator was talking about "complex societies" with the excitement of someone who had never had to manage a hospital emergency with a Spider-Man boyfriend.
"MJ?" Peter said, already with his eyes closed, his head resting on MJ's shoulder.
"Hm?"
"Thank you."
MJ didn't answer. He just held Peter a little tighter, felt the stitches under his fingers (firm, secure, healing), the pulse in the other's neck (alive, strong, stubbornly alive), and allowed himself to close his eyes.
Outside the window, New York stretched in every direction.
A hive of eight million people who didn't know that the man who protected them was at that moment curled up under a holey blanket, wearing an old NYU Nursing t-shirt (the fabric faded, the logo peeling) and snoring softly against the chest of the one who loved him. Spider-Man — the hero of NY, the symbol of hope, the guy who appeared in newspapers with headlines like SPIDER-MAN SCALES BUILDING TO SAVE CAT and SPIDER-MAN FOILS ROBBERY IN QUEENS — was fast asleep, making a noise that was half snore, half meow, completely ridiculous.
And that, MJ thought before falling asleep — before falling into that dark, warm abyss where there were no patients or emergencies or calls from rooftops, was more heroic than any cape or uniform.
Spider-Man needed stitches. Michael Dean James Watson needed coffee (lots of coffee) and more patience (much more patience) and maybe a new pair of sneakers. And in some impossible and perfectly New York way, they needed each other. Maybe one day they'd even get married.
MJ at least hoped that the two of them already had a place reserved in heaven for the stress they endured. That's what they say: with great power comes great responsibility. But also, he thought on the threshold of sleep — nestled against Peter's ribs, who was already asleep, his breathing finally calm, his body finally relaxed — with great responsibility comes great back pain from sleeping in crooked positions.
He felt Peter shift in his sleep, murmuring something unintelligible about "webbing" and "wasn't my fault," and then settle again, his face buried in MJ's neck, his arm draped across his chest as if to make sure he wasn't going anywhere. As if, MJ thought, with one last thread of consciousness before sleep took him completely. As if I would go anywhere without you. And he wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.